In music theory, the minor scale has three scale patterns – the natural minor scale, the harmonic minor scale, and the melodic minor scale – mirroring the major scale, with its harmonic and melodic forms.
In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.
In music theory, an interval is a difference in pitch between two sounds. An interval may be described as horizontal, linear, or melodic if it refers to successively sounding tones, such as two adjacent pitches in a melody, and vertical or harmonic if it pertains to simultaneously sounding tones, such as in a chord.
In music theory, the tritone is defined as a musical interval spanning three adjacent whole tones. For instance, the interval from F up to the B above it is a tritone as it can be decomposed into the three adjacent whole tones F–G, G–A, and A–B.
An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the ancohemitonic symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory, this symmetrical scale is commonly called the octatonic scale, although there are a total of 43 enharmonically non-equivalent, transpositionally non-equivalent eight-note sets.
In jazz, the altered scale, altered dominant scale, or Super Locrian scale is a seven-note scale that is a dominant scale where all non-essential tones have been altered. This means that it comprises the three irreducibly essential tones that define a dominant seventh chord, which are root, major third, and minor seventh and that all other chord tones have been altered. These are:
A jazz scale is any musical scale used in jazz. Many "jazz scales" are common scales drawn from Western European classical music, including the diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and the modes of the ascending melodic minor. All of these scales were commonly used by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, often in ways that directly anticipate jazz practice. Some jazz scales, such as the bebop scales, add additional chromatic passing tones to the familiar diatonic scales.
In music, a chord is a group of two or more notes played simultaneously, typically consisting of a root note, a third, and a fifth. Chords are the building blocks of harmony and form the harmonic foundation of a piece of music. They can be major, minor, diminished, augmented, or extended, depending on the intervals between the notes and their arrangement. Chords provide the harmonic support and coloration that accompany melodies and contribute to the overall sound and mood of a musical composition. For many practical and theoretical purposes, arpeggios and other types of broken chords may also be considered as chords in the right musical context.
A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone, is the smallest musical interval commonly used in Western tonal music, and it is considered the most dissonant when sounded harmonically. It is defined as the interval between two adjacent notes in a 12-tone scale, visually seen on a keyboard as the distance between two keys that are adjacent to each other. For example, C is adjacent to C♯; the interval between them is a semitone.
In Western music and music theory, diminution has four distinct meanings. Diminution may be a form of embellishment in which a long note is divided into a series of shorter, usually melodic, values. Diminution may also be the compositional device where a melody, theme or motif is presented in shorter note-values than were previously used. Diminution is also the term for the proportional shortening of the value of individual note-shapes in mensural notation, either by coloration or by a sign of proportion. A minor or perfect interval that is narrowed by a chromatic semitone is a diminished interval, and the process may be referred to as diminution.
In music theory, an augmented sixth chord contains the interval of an augmented sixth, usually above its bass tone. This chord has its origins in the Renaissance, was further developed in the Baroque, and became a distinctive part of the musical style of the Classical and Romantic periods.
The term sixth chord refers to two different kinds of chord, the first in classical music and the second in modern popular music.
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic pitches and chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses only seven different notes, rather than the twelve available on a standard piano keyboard. Music is chromatic when it uses more than just these seven notes.
Modes of limited transposition are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups. These scales may be transposed to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, but at least two of these transpositions must result in the same pitch classes, thus their transpositions are "limited". They were compiled by the French composer Olivier Messiaen, and published in his book La technique de mon langage musical.
In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole-tone scale, C D E F♯ G♯ A♯ C; the augmented scale, C D♯ E G A♭ B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E F♯ A B♭ C; and the blues scale, C E♭ F G♭ G B♭ C. A hexatonic scale can also be formed by stacking perfect fifths. This results in a diatonic scale with one note removed.
In Western music and music theory, augmentation is the lengthening of a note or the widening of an interval.
In music theory, the harmonic major scale is a musical scale found in some music from the common practice era and now used occasionally, most often in jazz. In George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept it is the fifth mode (V) of the Lydian Diminished scale. It corresponds to the Raga Sarasangi in Indian Carnatic music, or Raag Nat Bhairav in Hindustani music.
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are used to characterize scales. The terms are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair, especially when applied to contrasting features of the common practice music of the period 1600–1900.
In music theory, an inversion is a rearrangement of the top-to-bottom elements in an interval, a chord, a melody, or a group of contrapuntal lines of music. In each of these cases, "inversion" has a distinct but related meaning. The concept of inversion also plays an important role in musical set theory.
The jazz minor scale or ascending melodic minor scale is a derivative of the melodic minor scale, except only the ascending form of the scale is used. As the name implies, it is primarily used in jazz, although it may be found in other types of music as well. It may be derived from the major scale with a minor third, making it a synthetic scale, and features a dominant seventh chord on the fifth degree (V) like the harmonic minor scale. It can also be derived from the diatonic Dorian mode with a major seventh.
